South African Rand Plunges to New 2023 Low Versus US Dollar – Africa Bitcoin News
Just a few weeks after hitting its best exchange rate against the dollar in 2023, the South African rand fell to a new 2023 low of 18,636 local currency units per dollar on March 7. South Africa’s power shortage as well as the country’s recent gray listing by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) are believed to be fueling the rand’s slide.
10-hour power outage
The exchange rate of the South African rand against the US dollar recently plunged to a new 2023 low of 18.636 units for every dollar on March 7, 2023, the latest data has shown. Before the latest plunge, the rand rose to 16.721 per dollar on 12 January 2023, the currency’s best performance since the start of the year.
Since then, however, the rand has weakened by almost 10%, making it one of the worst performing African currencies in 2023. According to reports, the rand’s slide is to blame for South Africa’s never-ending electricity problems that have left many homes and businesses more than 10 hours without power.
The debilitating blackouts have since prompted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to appoint the country’s first electricity minister. In addition to dealing with the crippling power cuts, President Ramaphosa said the new minister, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, is expected to help facilitate the coordination of entities working to find a solution.
“The Minister will be expected to facilitate the coordination of the many departments and units involved in the crisis response, work with Eskom management to turn around the performance of existing power stations and accelerate the procurement of new generation capacity,” President Ramaphosa said. so.
Meanwhile, some South African commentators have argued that the recent addition of South Africa to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) gray list could be one of the reasons why the rand has recently underperformed against major global currencies.
At the time of writing (16:10 EST, March 10), the rand to dollar exchange rate is just under 18.6 units per dollar.
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